Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for stepping into the Chair for a few minutes. As Deputy Leddin rightly pointed out there is a lot of reading for us as committee members of to go through but the reports are extremely helpful and the engagement has been both welcome and really informative from that perspective.

My first question relates to the charging infrastructure for EVs. During the slideshow presentation Mr. Murphy mentioned there was uniform deficiency in infrastructure across the bloc. Ireland has its own targets and Deputies Leddin and Bruton mentioned the role of local authorities in delivering public infrastructure through the public purse. Are there any findings or advice in the European Court of Auditors report on this sort of roll-out? Is there an exemplar within the European Union to which Mr. Murphy could point and say that country is doing a good job of rolling it out?

On a related subject we were chatting about before the meeting, that is, battery sizes, car sizes and the development end evolution of car sizes, will the European Court of Auditors will be looking at this at some point in the future? We as a Continent, and perhaps as a globe, need to have a conversation about the enlargement of vehicles. I am not sure if Mr. Murphy is on social media much but I have often come across pictures of 1970s cars and their current versions, which are twice the size, on social media. I do not think people have become twice the size since the 1970s. We have these consumer-demanded vehicles and that demand almost certainly emanates from the United States. Can there be a report or perhaps a catalyst to move us away from that? Does Mr. Murphy have any suggestions as to how we might achieve that?